I imagine it'll end up like the AT AT walker Hasbro put out a couple of years ago: not actually an exclusive, but most stores within a given chain won't carry it unless they're in a populated enough area.

Do want one though. Plan to arrange it in city mode with Encore Fort Max and have Cloverfield looming over them... if I can find a case big enough to keep the cats off. Would it be terribly backward to break into a jewelry store to steal the display cabinets and leave the merchandise?

Unsure about it; want to wait and see exactly what the takara version changes besides an extra red gun.

There's this rumour that hasbro is making him in much more limited numbers than usual, perhaps to avoid having a behemoth taking up monstrous retail space and having it clearanced to death.

On the toy itself, while it looks impressive, it doesn't really do much, right? Both his transformations basically have him sit down, extend the legs a bit and flip down the head. The big selling point is his size.

Metroplex looks pretty sweet so far. I think the price will keep me away from him though, as I can think of many other things that require my $100 around the house. Guess I'll be sticking with my Cybertron Metroplex!

We don't have anything against people sharing tips. All we try to avoid is people turning up and selling outside the area set aside for it.

For instance, around here there's apparently a collectibles store in Stourbridge that will pre-order pretty much anything on request... had it not been chucking it with rain last weekend I might have looked into that rather than hitting up Kapow. Whose list price for the Takara version is basically the same as for the US one. It'll be out later, but the preview images look good and it's the first (and likely only) "base" TF I'm collecting.

£160 via Kapow isn't too bad, considering Encore Fort Max is £320 (!). This one's isn't for me though, I don't think. I have Brave Max and don't have any space for him, so picking up another giant doesn't make any sense.

The 110 USD price does hide a lot of extra charges, especially if you're shipping it in from another continent and may end up paying customs for it.

I want to see how the SDCC exclusive fares in term of price and aftermarket prices though. Retail for SDCC Bruticus was around 100 USD, his prices soared close to 200-250 USD. SDCC Metroplex (which has a fair amount of extras over the regular retail) is at about 150 USD.